Pennsylvania is set to receive nearly $1.2 billion in Broadband Equity Access and Deployment funding.
The Pennsylvania Development Broadband Authority will be the grantee of the funds and is tasked with determining how to distribute the money across the commonwealth to reach as many unserved and underserved locations as possible.
Underserved is defined as anything between a low of 25 megabits per second, or Mbps, for downloads and 3 Mbps for uploads and up to 100 Mbps for downloads and 20 Mbps for uploads. A rate under 25 Mbps and 3 Mbps is considered unserved, according to Timothy Hippensteel, DRIVE office/project manager.
According to data provided on the broadband authority’s website, 94 percent, of a total of 286,026 locations are considered served with 100 Mbps down/20 Mbps up service.
The authority’s map, which can be viewed at https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/7cafb0b5d9444eb18d0873c8afaafb86/, displays locations where Internet speed tests have been run and indicates whether those locations were served, underserved or unserved.
As shown on the map, local areas with particularly poor connections include south Sunbury, locations below the Mahanoy Mountain, Middleburg and north Danville among others.
Earlier this year, DRIVE Economic Development asked Valley residents to participate in Internet speed tests from their homes.
Submissions across Pennsylvania will challenge whether there is service in the location as well as the quality of the service being provided, according to DRIVE Executive Director Jennifer Wakeman.
DRIVE teamed up with Sascha Meinrath of Penn State University to gather data from Columbia, Montour, Northumberland, Snyder and Union counties.
According to Meinrath, the ‘fundamental problem’ behind the disconnected state is the inaccuracy of measurements.
“There is a tremendous number of households where officially, they’re served, but in reality they are not,” Meinrath said. “The irony is the grant funding that is allocated to bridge the digital divide, will not be allowable in those areas where that mismatch occurs.”
Data has shown the mismatch is not rare and is happening across the state, according to Meinrath.
“This affects tens of thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands of locations within the region,” he said.
About 15 years ago, Meinrath co-founded Measurement Lab, the largest open repository broadband data on the planet which collects millions of broadband speed tests everyday all around the globe.
Through the unprecedented data set collected by Measurement Lab, Mainrath has had the opportunity to study data inconsistencies where he has found the official metrics of broadband services do not match up with what people experience.
The broadband challenges happening now are the first since Measurement Lab began, according to Meinrath.
“We keep screwing up broadband measurement in ways that hide the digital divide,” he said. “The ways to fix this problem are known, but our leaders refuse to implement those fixes. We know the best practices and how to do this better, but we don’t.”
While there are many possible rationals as to why officials refuse to fix the issue, Meinrath believes they don’t want to acknowledge how bad the state of connectivity really is.
“We’re spending millions to ever so slowing triangulate on what we have been stating is a more accurate ground truth that was officially disavowed,” Meinrath said. “The data is beginning to look a bit more like the data we have already been providing for free for years in Pennsylvania.”
Though data accuracy is improving, it continues to woefully undercount unserved and underserved household, those that could benefit from the funds, according to Meinrath.
“We need to start bringing pressure to bear on Governor Shapiro’s office directly,” he said. “We’re going to get one bite at this apple and so far the state has allocated no broadband funding to help out.”
Meinrath compared Pennsylvania’s lack of state funding to New York’s right next door where $1 billion will go toward broadband access.
“We should be making these investments and thus far our state has simply refused to prioritize broadband funding,” Meinrath said. “I wish this had a nice simple answer, but the reality is we are either going to invest a lot of money today or substantially more money tomorrow. If we wait, we will be paying the cost of our failure to make that investment.”
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